Ex-Mossad. Ex-Company. Now Hana helps run the organization that tries to move Evolved humans to places of safety, while biding her time and waiting for a chance to take out the Company Institute.

portrayed by
Stana Katic

Every generation has its war. For my grandmother, it was the resistance against the Nazis of World War II. My mother's fight was the Six Day War, in which she was one of the first female Israeli fighter pilots. As a child, I loved their stories, but it seemed the wars were over and I would not be able to follow in their footsteps.

Only a child could believe so — that any time is one of light and peace.

A terrorist's suicide attack killed my mother and grandmother, leaving me to recover in the hospital and then seek vengeance for their deaths. I joined Mossad with the intent to be the best of the best, to fight on the front lines and punish the terrorists for what they had done. Any terrorist. All terrorists. I believed they were the enemies of my generation.

Instead, I was assigned to Intelligence. Trained in analysis and strategy. I was good at it — very good, able to predict our enemies' moves almost before they considered making them. I hated it. Chained to a desk, unable to fight the foes of my people. Even then, I admitted the job was necessary… but I did not want to be the one to do it. I believed, if I did my job good enough, if I was the perfect soldier, I could be promoted out from behind the desks.

I wanted action.

He came in the night — my ally, my enemy. The man in the horn-rimmed glasses. He lied to me, but I believed exactly what I wanted to hear. That they would train me for a special CIA program. That I would see action. That I would fight. They tested me, studied me, trained me. They pushed my body to its limits and beyond. Somewhere in all of that, I regained something I had never realized I lost — trust. Trust in myself. I had spent years trying to be more than I am. To be better. To be good enough. To live up to my family's legacy. In all that, I forgot that I am good enough.

When I remembered, my mind opened to the world. It was like walking out of the darkness into the light, if you could do so without being blinded by glare. So much in the modern world is digital. Nearly all of that is sent somewhere — bounced around satellites and transferred to somewhere else in the world. All of that information is so many open books to me. Every IM. Every email. Every uploaded or downloaded file. I can hear it, send it, control it.

After I manifested, he gave me my first mission.

He left me to die.

I was sent to Tanzania, to retrieve a file from a scientist's computer. To prevent him from creating a lethal weapon and selling it to the highest bidder. I succeeded in my mission. I was captured. I escaped. All of this, I did alone. Because I can trust myself — and he reminded me that the only person I can trust is myself.

Then I returned to America in search of the truth. The truth is this: I was wrong. Terrorists are not the enemies of our time. For all the evil they do, they are incidental. Our enemies are the people behind the Company. The people who would imprison, control, and use the Evolved.

I began to work against them. To warn those they were after. To look for the source of their orders, so I could find the head of the serpent and cut it off. Then he contacted me. Asking for help. The nerve of the man. But I agreed, because what he asked for was what I already intended to do. To bring down the Company.

Two years ago, we set out to put a wrench in the Company's gears. To remove the dual systems by which they tracked their Evolved subjects. Their targets, tests, and case studies. Their victims. We failed — but not by our lapse. Two years ago, New York City exploded. The explosion changed everything.

I was to fly into orbit on a Chinese space shuttle, thereby getting close enough to terminate the isotope tracking satellite. But I needed proper documentation, and I needed to get to China — neither of which was possible in the wake of the explosion. Oh, I could have penetrated even the emergency security measures they activated, of that I have no doubt… but not from this side of the globe. Because I could not get to China, I could not complete my task.

I took up another one instead: helping those endangered by the Company and the laws the Company has created. It is a good thing to do, while we bide our time — myself and the man who has already betrayed me once. Where my mother and grandmother were able to confront their foes on the battlefield, I must fight in the shadows, because my enemies do the same. I must be the analyst, the strategist.

It is a good fight, but I still wait. Somewhere, there is a serpent's head. Someday, it will make a mistake. I will be listening. And when it happens, I will not fail.

I will end the Company.

"Wi-fi satellite signals beam data around the world. Seemingly invisible. But not to me. I can sense them, read them, steal them, send them, and destroy them as easily as putting pen to paper." — Wireless, part 3

Hana is a living wireless modem. She can intercept any wireless transmission; in fact, she continually receives data from around the world. Every email, IM, and packet of data transmitted anywhere is so much noise for her to pick out of the air. The discipline of her training, both Mossad and Company, along with heightened processing capability granted by her ability, allows Hana to handle this quantity of data with as much (or more) ease as any given computer. She can pick out any single piece of it that interests her; she is also able to 'track' a wireless feed and follow it back to its source.

It is also possible for Hana to transmit wireless communicades, which can be received and interpreted by any desired computer or computer-based system — whether it is currently connected to the internet or not. It only needs to have a wireless receiver. She is able to shut down and/or cause glitches even in global-effect systems such as cellphone and GPS satellites.

Hana's ability to transmit is especially affected by range and the clarity of the signal. The vast amounts of wireless traffic in an urban setting produce a backdrop of white noise that attenuates such things as shutdown orders. Retrieving data, especially if the datafile is of significant size, may require a high-quality signal and therefore close proximity (or being directly in the path of the wireless signal) as well. Where 'close proximity' usually means 'within the same building'.

If a computer lacks Internet capability, Hana cannot directly interface with it. If it has a wireless modem, or is even connected to a phone line, it's as good as her own personal playground — but a stand-alone system, with absolutely /no/ pathway for network communication, is proof against her power. Her training, experience, and instinctive familiarity with computer systems makes Hana pretty good at teasing information out of a computer by hand, but it just isn't the same.

Hana's power can be slowed down by encryption, firewalls, and other security measures. However, it's only a matter of time before she breaks them, in most circumstances. If the security is particularly good, she may have to get close to the machine to facilitate that breakthrough. Conversely, Hana can potentially be affected by computer viruses and related bits of malicious code. Most viruses are relatively simple things; their creators never imagined a /living/ computer, and so they're no more effective against her innate defenses than a plant virus is at infecting a human host. Nonetheless, the door does swing both ways.

Note also that Hana can do with (digital) radio what she does with wireless transmissions.

The dead are the worst taskmasters.No matter how you struggle, no matter what you sacrifice, what you lose, what you pay — they give you no nod, however minimal, to show their approval.No benediction.No absolution.

Michelle West, The Uncrowned King, p. 230

In an ally, considerations of house, clan, planet, race are insignificant besides two prime questions, which are:1. Can he shoot?2. Will he aim at your enemy?

You reached out your hand to me. Are you surprised that I would reach back? — Somebody and Nobody

Noah: "Do you think one day you'll be able to throw with your feet?"
Hana: "Do you really want to find out?"
Noah: "As long as you're not throwing them at me."
Hana: "I might." Except it sounds more like I will. — Consultation

O wild angels of the open hills
Before all legends and before all tears;
O voyagers of where the evening falls
In the vast August of the years:
O halfseen passers of the lonely knolls,
Before all sorrow and before all truth
You were: and you were with me in my youth.

Angels of the shadowed ancient land
That lies yet unenvisioned, without myth,
Return, and silent-winged descend
On the winds that you have voyaged with,
An in the barren evening stand
On the hills of my childhood, in whose silences,
Savage, before all sorrow, your presence is.

"Wild Angels" — Ursula K. Le Guin

The hawk shapes the wind
and the curve of the wind

Like eggs lie the great gold hills
in the curve of the world
to that keen eye

The children wait

The hawk declares height
by his fell fall

The children cry

Comes the high hunter
carrying the kill
curving the winds
with strong wings

To the old hawk
all earth is prey, and child

"For Ted" — Ursula K. Le Guin

Gallery:

Relationships

Many might find it hard to believe for the aloof, violence-prone technopath, but family — at least her maternal relatives — is the single most important thing in Hana's world. Family that has been lost, and found, and then lost again… perhaps forever, this time, and if that's the case, what bedrock does she have left to stand on?

The answer to that question, Hana could never have anticipated, not in a million years.

Noa Gitelman is the daughter Hana never expected to have, the continuation of her family's legacy sent back from a future where Hana herself is dead. Their relationship is complicated by the fact that Noa inherited her mother's pride, temper, and (lack of) facility with words, but they seem to be working their way through that. Regardless of such details, however — Noa is blood.

The disembodied consciousness of an uncle she never met alive, T.Monk was the last 'living' member of Hana's family — until he 'died' saving her from a Chinese technopath and a deadly computer virus. That didn't go over well… especially when he resurfaced not as himself.

The disembodied consciousness of a boy she never knew, Hana considered R.Ajas something of an honorary cousin because her uncle adopted him as a protege. Until he also 'died', in the same confrontation that claimed T.Monk. While he did become part of Rebel, R.Ajas is not the part of Rebel that really carries significance for Hana.

It took Hana a long time to unbend enough to accept that Rebel was more than an illusion, more than fragments imitating spirit, more than a manipulative entity trying to secure her trust — that Richard Drucker truly lived on within this tripartite being. Then he got himself entangled with Messiah. Infected with a virus. Went insane and endangered a mission they had both been entrusted with. Hana herself dismantled Rebel… an act she will never forgive herself for, all the more so because she knows she could and would do it again, family or no.

There are a few out there who aren't allies, aren't enemies, aren't faceless other. Life would be easier if they'd just pick a category and stay there.

Hana met Logan at a fighting ring, later discovered he had a premonition of them sleeping together. To bury her own grief, anger, self-hatred, and believed imminent demise, she went along with it — only, demise proved not forthcoming. After that… well. Their powers were forcibly swapped, Hana gave Logan a crashcourse in dealing with her ability, sparks and accusations flew, and ultimately they arrived at some kind of accord. This absolutely does not a relationship make, rocky or otherwise. Absolutely not.

An ally in Phoenix, an enemy with the Company and Pinehearst, a tolerated nuisance in Messiah… Peter Petrelli is the epitome of "can't pick a side", however much Hana wishes he would. She also wishes she really could blame him for Rebel's destruction… wishes it fervently. Unfortunately, she knows too well what it is to be manipulated.

The Ferry would believe her if she claimed Bennet an ally; Noah himself might not. But he's become that again, despite herself; in four years, he's stood by the Ferry. Acted in the Ferry's interests, most of the time, although there's one incident Hana's not about to forgive him for even now. And — it means something, that he knows her. Knows, without being told, where she comes from; why she is who she is. Knows her better than she knows herself. Not even Hana can sustain suspicion forever in the face of such.

She doesn't do a lot of business with Cardinal, given his (justifiable) technophobia, and she still detests Edward Ray. The fact that Cardinal puts the man on a pedestal aggravates Hana considerably. But they have the same enemies: and for the present, that's what matters most.

The man behind the Institute is Richard Cardinal… according to Richard Cardinal. Hana can work with that. Names, faces, identities don't matter — a target's a target, Rebel proved that all too well. This one's at the top of her list.

The nominal head of the Institute. Enemy by definition. End of story.

The woman doesn't die. The Founders are practically gone, the Company is fallen… but Cardinal saysshe's still in the game. Something May Have To Be Done.

The only good enemy is a dead one. Provided they stay that way, then they're very good indeed.

Harold Fletcher

A Company Founder, Evolved with the power of chlorine emission (as Hana discovered the hard way). Strangled in his office and a problem no more.

A Company Founder, Evolved with the power of biological manipulation (and wielder of a shotgun). Faced her execution with nerves of steel, which earned her something in the way of respect. But still, dead all the same.

Carlos Mendez

A Company Founder who thought he'd be safe hiding in the jungles of Suriname, until his precognitive power revealed a Fury was coming to his sanctuary. He too went to his death knowingly.